New Level, New Devil: My Sober Bachelorette Party in Nashville, TN
About a week before my bachelorette party in Nashville, TN, I was about 440 days alcohol-free, and I started questioning (not for the first time) my decision not to drink.
In Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Control Alcohol, he says to never question the decision not to drink.
But there I was, planning my bachelorette party, questioning everything.
Because imagining myself sober for the party bus and the bars on Broadway started to eat at me. It gave me this weird feeling…like not drinking was the wrong path, and drinking was the right one.
I started very seriously believing thoughts like:
You used to drink at events like this all the time, and you were fine!
Your life was still good when you drank.
You never had a problem, just go out and enjoy yourself! You can still drink and have a great life.
To which I now say: new level, new devil.
It had been a long time since I’d had thoughts like these. But they burbled back up like a soda burp, almost like they were buried in me this whole time, waiting for the right time to say hello.
They said: drinking was okay, and I was stupid for believing otherwise. No question about that. And I had been stupid this whole time for not drinking (and also an embarrassment).
The Turning Point Before the Bachelorette Party
This was the point when I realized that I had to go outside of myself for help. “Myself” wasn’t doing me any good. I had to go to God for this one.
I grabbed my cross necklace off my jewelry stand and asked Jesus to help me. My mind was feeding me thoughts that couldn’t possibly be true, right, or helpful. But I couldn’t stop thinking they were accurate, so I had to get some outside help from the big man upstairs.
Just then, I remembered something I’d read in the Bible a few days earlier, where Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert. Here’s the passage from Mark 1: 12–15.
“The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”
This was indeed my desert moment, where I felt tempted to give into something that only existed to take me away from myself.
And the thought of Jesus coming out of the desert unscathed, with the help of angels by his side, gave me faith that I could also make it through that tough moment.
A couple days later, I moped around feeling teary and sad about the whole thing. Especially when I’d get asked about drinking at my wedding. You’re not even going to have a glass of wine??
On the one hand, it all makes me feel like a terrible person. But on the other hand, sobriety is making me the strongest version of me that has ever existed, in this lifetime or previous ones.
Because I’ve always been the one who does what she’s told. Smile, make people feel good, don’t cause trouble. So this not drinking and going against the grain thing is hard for me. Because I am nothing if not a people pleaser: if it pleases the people that I drink, I drink.
But sober Monique is growing a spine and (slowly) learning to part ways with the pack.
Here’s how my sober bachelorette party in Nashville went down.
Bachelorettes on Broadway
After my bout of sadness and uncertainty about not drinking, I snapped back to normal. I can only assume 15 months of not drinking has rewired my brain so that my default has now become “no boozin.”
I packed my bags, adjusted my bride veil, embraced my gorgeous bachelorette crew, and flew to Nashville.
The plane ride was great: lots of catching up on each other’s lives, watching in-flight movies, and eating snacks. We stayed at an Airbnb, and that first night was pure magic. We stocked up on food, I drank a mocktail Vodka Spritz by Free AF, and we watched Bridesmaids. It was the best night ever.
The next day we had some plans shift, so we ended up starting our day at the White Limozeen Dolly Parton bar at the Graduate Hotel. I ordered a mocktail (got it for free!), and we danced in the outside area and took a ton of pictures.
While this whole trip is what I like to call my “Soberlympics”, later that night in the open-air party bus on Broadway was like my version of going for the gold.
I wasn’t really worried about drinking or missing out on drinking — but I was curious how it would feel to be on a party bus sober, something I’d never experienced.
And MAN, did I experience!
It was literally, one of the most joyous times of my life.
I was in a safe space with amazing music, dancing with people I loved, while cruising down a street in a state I’d never been to that was alive with lights and party people! (My favorite kind of people.)
Every time we passed by another party bus (there were so many), we would all wave and cheer at each other and raise our cups. Even people on the streets would throw their arms up and cheer when we drove by. It was an epic party moment in a constantly shifting environment with so many happy people.
Even one of the homeless guys on the street pointed at us and danced. People were taking pictures of us from the side of the road, and I never felt more of a connection with people I had never met! It was like everyone was there to participate and party. It was THE BEST.
Also, it was like my old mindset and my new mindset were colliding. There I was, dancing in an open-air party bus at night with my best friends, with my favorite music blaring from all sides, in my peak happiness moment…and one part of my brain said DRINK DRINK DRINK and the other part of my brain said FEEL FEEL FEEL HOW GOOD DOES THIS FEEL TO BE WITH ALL OF YOURSELF?
Nothing was being taken away from me in that moment, nothing was altering me — I had the wind, the music, the people, and all the feels, and there are no words to describe the sheer happiness of knowing that you are all there and literally feeling it all. It’s like coming home to yourself and giving yourself a hug because…where have you been all this time?
My old self and new self might have been bumping heads, but my new self was winning. I couldn’t have done this at 3 months or even 6 months sober, but at nearly 15 months sober, I was strong enough.
We also shared the party bus with a younger group (whom we lovingly dubbed “The Gen Zers”). We let them educate us on their music for a while, and sober Monique decided not to try and push her millennial music agenda on them.
As far as drinks go, I had an alcohol-free (AF) beer, and it hit the spot. I didn’t want to drink, but there’s no question that the taste of alcohol still made so much sense to me in that environment. So God bless AF beers for those occasions!
Also, just to knock me off my “I’m sober!” pedestal, I definitely looked like a drunk bachelorette after spilling my AF beer on people while trying to fix my purse strap (which broke on the bus).
I was mortified and kept shouting “I’m so sorry! This doesn’t even have alcohol!” I promise I’m not drunk!
One day I will learn to let people think what they want, without having to compensate or explain in some way.
Drunk Bathroom Talk — My Favorite Thing
After the bus ride ended, we went back to the party bus station, where the place was jumping. There was a bar and music and swarms of bachelor and bachelorette parties getting on and off the party buses.
It was exactly how I imagined a college party night would look: young, drunk people swarming in and out of every which way, people yelling, people dancing, pure party chaos. I loved it.
I got off the bus and had to pee, so I stood in a long line of girls for those nice trailer porta-potties. And this was one of those clear moments in time that I will always remember: drunk bathroom talk.
When I was a drinker, I always found bathroom talk at bars and clubs fascinating. You’d hear so many random conversations that jarred you and made you laugh (or worry).
Now that I was completely sober, it was eye-opening to hear the conversations around me.
I had a conversation with a woman who told me she was at a bachelorette party with three pregnant women (and they were handling it like champs).
I also watched as three (very young) women huddled around the sink, discussing their confusion about their sexuality.
I also chatted with a young gal who, with eyes half-closed, told me it was really hard to tell if people were in the restroom because there was no space under the doors for us to see people’s feet.
“We can’t see their feet!” she shouted to me, before turning around and shouting it back to the line of women behind us. I thought this was hysterical.
But I was having so many feels. Everyone was so nice, I just wanted to gather them all in a group hug. They were heart-wrenchingly young and innocent, with half-closed eyelids but fully open hearts.
It made me want to cry and it made me want to rally for them at the same time. Maybe it’s my late-thirties maternal clock talking but I desperately wanted to mother them and tell them they were beautiful and everything was going to work out for them. It was like some weird feminine energy that felt both comforting and energizing. I was glad to be sober for it.
“Be Careful Out There”
One of the most notable parts of our trip was the number of people who told us to be careful: grocery store clerks, uber drivers, bartenders — everyone saw our group and seemed to worry about the same thing. And, unfortunately, this ‘thing’ is so prevalent, I don’t even have to mention it — every woman knows what it is.
But not drinking was the best thing I could do to stay safe. (I can literally feel my dad agreeing with me from his place in heaven.)
The town was crawling with brides and bridal crews lettin’ loose. At one point, we were dancing at a bar and a friend of mine said “This is the most roofied bar on Broadway.”
I had already been feeling less safe without my fiance around, so the fact that I was not drinking made me feel extra aware of my surroundings, and thankfully, I never felt like I was in a vulnerable situation.
But there were definitely times when I felt uneasy. Like when a woman pulled a pipe out of her shirt and threatened to hit some guy over the head with it when we were at an underground bar. Or when a nice-looking cowboy got unnecessarily aggressive with an innocent bystander near the bathroom.
There was also a lot of talk about Riley Strain, the 22-year-old who was found in the Cumberland River in West Nashville on March 22, after going missing earlier that month after a night of drinking.
Not drinking on this trip made me count my blessings, for all of the times that nothing happened when I was drunk in public in the past in nothing but a mini skirt with a couple of friends. All those nights we went back to guys’ apartments after meeting at bars and slipped into cars we shouldn’t have gotten into, we were lucky nothing ever happened to us.
There’s a real sense of empowerment that comes from being a woman and not drinking, not falling asleep at the wheel so some guy can put his hand in your lap and convince you to go back to his place.
There were a couple of times when I found myself alone on this trip, and while people chatted me up, I never felt like I was in any danger because I had full composure of myself. But it made me worry about other women who were drunk and alone.
Case in point: I talked to a woman on the Friday we were there. She popped into a restaurant we were waiting to be seated at, by herself. She walked up to me and told me her “babysitters” had dropped her off, and that she was supposed to go to the bar and “stay put”.
She was visibly drunk, and after looking at my bridal outfit, told me she was supposed to get married that day. She said “Congratulations”, and started crying.
I asked her why she wasn’t getting married that day after all, and she said her partner was abusive and there was a restraining order against him. I gave her a hug, and she rushed off to the bathroom.
This was one of those moments where you feel so deeply for another human being, regardless of how little you know them. I wondered why her friends had dropped her off by herself, and whether it was a good idea for her to be alone at a bar in that state.
I had never been so confronted with the vulnerability that is being a drunk woman alone in public. A lot of things have changed for me since I stopped drinking.
The Magic That Showed Up in Nashville
There were so many instances on this trip that were pure magic: like when we missed our reservation time for a restaurant and had to wait an extra 10 minutes but ended up sitting right next to a stage where they sang Taylor Swift; or when we saw a note on a wall that said “Frankie I love you” and took it as a sign from my uncle Frank, who passed away about a year ago; or when we had an Uber driver who wasn’t ours stop to help us with our luggage on the way to the airport; or when we got free water bottles at the party bus station; or when I wasn’t charged for a mocktail at the Dolly Parton hotel.
And to top it all off, there was a real sense of group love for the girls in our group. Everyone got along really well, and my favorite parts of the night were when we were all sitting on the couch eating snacks and laughing into the late-night hours, gossiping about celebrities and embarrassing moments. I truly love the women I went with, and I’m so grateful they decided to spend the weekend with me!
Our Airbnb was also beautiful, and on that first morning there, I woke up early (read: hangover-free) and sat outside to read my Bible with coffee and the birds. Pure magic. :)
I’m so incredibly grateful to have experienced this trip with my full self, and I’m proud of myself for surpassing a new level of devil.
Today I am 470 days alcohol-free, and in 10 days I’ll be getting married: a story (unwritten) for another day.
